rfi - 
i 252 
MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
OCT.46 
ofljiqm (Kconomg. 
FALL PLOWING FOR SPRING GRAIN. 
Two acres of a neighbor’s barley this year 
was on a wheat stubble, where the clover 
failed in 1874. and which was turned over 
last fall just before winter set In. Though 
there was no c-lover, a considerable quantity 
of blue grass had come in, making quite a 
sod. which threatened to give trouble unless 
subdued. Last spring he thought of plowing 
again, but the blue grass sod was unrotted 
and ready to grow again if turned to the 
light. At our suggestion nothing was used 
on this two acres taccept the cultivator run¬ 
ning very lightly, so as not to upturn the blue 
grass. A seed oed not more than two or 
three inches deep was prepared and the bar 
ley drilled ou this the 4th oi May. By the 
side of this two acres was a piece of four 
acres clover sod which had potatoes in 1874 
and was left in ex client condition. This 
■was plowed in the spring five or six inches 
deep, and a dark, mellow seedbed obtained. 
IVe supposed, of course, that the spring 
plowed laud was in bestcond tn/u and would 
yield a better crop than that which was 
merely cultivated. It looked so for a tune 
aud indeed up to harvest; but when we came 
to thresh this two acres of fall plowed wheal 
stubble, it yielded fully fifty bushels of two- 
rowed barley per acre, against an average ol 
forty-three bushels for the whole piece. The 
barley heads were leninrkably heavy and 
better filled than the other, though the Crop, 
as a whole, was a good oue. 
We have been studying this subject since 
threshing time, trying to devise some expla¬ 
nation of tins remarkable result. The two 
acres were not supposed to be richer not, 
indeed, so rich, for the potatoes hau a clover 
soil aud some manure, while no manure hau 
been put on the wheat stubble in several 
years. The owuer exposed a lighter crop 
an the two acres than on the four, and was 
as much surprised as any one at the result. 
It is possible that the potato ground was ae- 
ueieut m potash and that the drain ou the 
land by potatoes had exhausted that or some 
other element. Other circumstances, how¬ 
ever, make tms tneory improbable. 
We suggest as a second, and probably true 
reason lor this superiority, that it may be 
due to the tali plowing in one case and spring 
plowing iu the other. Every farmer has no 
ticed that winter frosts always pulverize 
two or three niches oh the surface of plowed 
fields very finely, clods of earth are broken 
open and their fertilizing element made avail 
able, ripring plowing turns this finely com 
minuted sod to the bottom of Ihc furrow, 
and upturns three or four inches of soil com* 
paratively unprepared for plant toocL Barley 
roots are not extensive ramblers, and it is not 
strange that the crop should be largest where 
the Unest, i iclicst Soil was kept near the sur¬ 
face and within their reucu. With oats, 
whose roots extend further, the result might 
have been less marked, though even with 
them it would huve made a duierence. 
This general superiority of spring grain on 
fall plowed ground rather than after spring 
plowing has been very noticeab.e within the 
limits of our observation the past seasou. 
Many pieces of winter killed merely culti¬ 
vated over have yielded extremely heavy 
crops of barley and oats. Do the experience 
and observation ol formers generally warrant 
the theory We have suggested. If so, it will 
be excellent policy to plow corn or potato 
ground Lliis full, leave the land us rough as 
possible through the winter aud only culti¬ 
vate and ha. j o w before sowing or cLriiimg-Ju 
the spring grain. This subject is well worthy 
further experiment aud investigation. 
on in the same course, manuring, cropping, 
and seeding, as if he had direct ownership of 
the land. As Mr. Bcottson himself says: 
“To discontinue the application of manure, 
to extend the growth of wheat and grain, to 
be careless of the cleanness of ray crops, 
would injure myself even more than my suc¬ 
cessor, and whether I received a six months’ 
or a two years’ notice, would not affect my 
management.” 
The farm is only three miles from Liver¬ 
pool, and its extraordinary fertility is main- 
taiued by liberal purchase of manure from 
that city. Speaking generally, everything is 
sold olT the land. Some 6,000 bush, of grain 
are grown every year, almost all for sale— 
ibo potatoes and mangels and the ry e grass 
uro all for sale. Ten horses loading into Liv¬ 
erpool are daily bringing town arid byre and 
stable dung out from town. This, with 10 to 
12 ton annually of guano and nitrate of soda, 
is what keeps the fertility of the land up to 
tbe mark. And as long as rye grass fetches 
yi.£cl, and straw 9d. per stone of lbs., there 
is neither any need of the landowner to fear 
that the tenant will allow Die fertility of the 
land to lapse, or that the latter is likely to 
buy herds of cattle or flocks of sheep to con¬ 
sume his green crops instead of selling them, 
because that would be more in accordance 
with the maxims of good farming. Never- 
theless beef, and milk, aud mutton, and pork 
are all produced in quantity upon this farm. 
There is generally sufficient thin corn in a 
produce of 6,000 bushels, and sufficient odds 
and ends in green and grass produce, to be 
turned to serviceable account in feeding stall 
and fold. 
Ten cows are milked, a dozen or more cattle 
are latled iu winter, sheep are bought when 
necessary, and the dungheap is thus not 
wholly brought from town. 
There is no doubt that the farm, in its 
growth of gram and of potatoes, as well as 
of cattle food and straw for the Liverpool 
cow houses and stabics, contributes a larger 
quantity of value to the nourishment of the 
neighboring population than it would do 
unuor the strict rules ol any ordiuary system 
of agriculture. And this, with the cleanness 
of the i*ud and obvious profitableness of tbe 
management to the tenant, murks it out as 
quite deserving the chief place which has 
Keen given it by the Society’s judges. 
The farm is in the midst of a most produc¬ 
tive oistiiet and it is in the hands of a most 
energetic tenant. Mr. riCOTTBOX is weA uC" 
quslated, by personal insp ction, with the 
various sLvles of agriculture adopted from 
one end of the island to the other ; and he 
has chosen that particular style which is best 
adapted to the circumstances in which he 
nimself is placed 
One of his remarks deserves record as ap¬ 
plicable now to agriculture almost every¬ 
where “ The business is profitable or not, 
according as a man looks after his men. If 
ordinary tenant-farmers were to superintend 
their laboiers no closer than those are super¬ 
intended who work on turnpike road or the 
home farms of our landlords, there is not a 
bushel of corn could be grown at a profit in 
the island 1” 
--- 
GRASS AN EXPENSIVE MANURE, 
AN ENGLISH PRIZE FARM. 
It Is often said that farmers could learn 
much by traveling more, not only visiting 
their nearer neighbors but extending their 
range to tbe better farming of other sections 
and even of other countries. English farm¬ 
ing has ioug been acknowledged to be supe- 
r.or, as tnc large average crops of grain prove, 
and tnuca luignt be learned if wide awake, 
enterprising farmers wouid visit England 
aud ouserve the methods of the best agricul- 
t urists ol that country. Nc.xt to that is a 
good written description ot tnose methods, 
„nd ibis we lind in some ol the English agri¬ 
cultural papers, l'he Loudon Agricultural 
GiZdit of August 14. u, describes the prize 
mnn of Mr. W. &OOTTSON of Aigburth, near 
L.Vvipooi, wtiion thisyeai took the premium 
as t ic b. i farm of 150 acres of arable land. 
Mr. fcCo .sox is a Lenaui larmer, renting his 
laud ti oiu ye r to year anti liable to be turned 
out at six months’ notice. Yet he goes right 
Ansel W, Putnam, in the New England 
Parmer, argues that the common practice of 
feeding off the fall growth on meadow's and 
pastures is justifiable. This growth he cal¬ 
culates at one-tenth of the year, and the very 
richest and best feed the pastures produce. 
Mr, Putnam continues:—“is it any better 
fanning to leave the cream of the grass to 
inciease the next crop, than it is to leave the 
strippings, the cream of the milk, to increase 
the next milking t It 1 leave on au acre what 
will make 500 pounds of autumnal hay, worth 
to me $5 to feed, what interest will mother 
earth pay for the use of that $5 worth of 
grass ? if an acre of land, able to grow oue 
ion of hay, has the entire growih felt uncut, 
how long before it will be able to grow two 
ions ? A correct answer to this question tells 
us what interest mother earth pays for the 
use of grabs. Cannibalism may be better 
than starvation—it may be belter to feed 
grass w'ltb grass than to let it starve. If by 
using the fall growth oue can save $100 worth 
of hay, is it hot better farming to sell the hoy 
and buy $100 worth of fertilizers to feed the 
grass With than it is to leave the fall growth- 
on the ground and not bury tbe plant food i 
This is an important practical question to 
oue who is trying, with limited means, to 
increase the productive capacity of his grass 
laud.” 
We think Mr. Putnam’s reasoning is sound 
except as to clover. Where young clover is 
fed close the result is likely to be the winter- 
killing of the plant. Where clover is winter- 
killed no amount of fertilizers applied in 
spring can make a crop. Common pasture 
gras3 is not liable to winter-kill, may be prof¬ 
itably fed close if desired, and tbe deficiency 
made good by manure less expensive than 
grass. 
- -♦♦♦• - 
SCOTCH vs. ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 
Mu. A. McNeel Caik, in a letter to the 
Farmer, comparing Scotch with English ag¬ 
riculture, makes out a poor case for the lat¬ 
ter. He shows that, with a finer climate aud 
more fertile land. England, when judged by 
the Scottish standard, falls short in the pro¬ 
duction of stork to the extent of 1,500.000 
cattle and 17,600,000 sheep. The reason as¬ 
signed for this is that, in England, the total 
area under grass, 10.t00.000 acres are under 
natural grasses and but 2 500 000 under culti¬ 
vated grasses, clover, etc.; while of the 2,500,- 
000 acres under grass m Scotland, near one- 
half is under cultivated grasses. The old 
pastures of Eugland will make fatter beef 
and sweeter butter, but will not feed, acre 
for acre, as many mouths as if the land were 
regularly cleaned, renovated and enriched 
by manures. 
-♦♦♦- 
Wind mill8 are yearly getting more and 
more into use. They are not only employed 
for raising water, to which they are so well 
adapted, but for grinding grain. Mr. W. H. 
Eaton, residing in Iowa, In the Prairie Farm¬ 
er, says of them :—“ I purchased a geared 
mill last winter (a 16-foot) for the purpose of 
giinding and pumping. I have ground since 
Jan. 5, 1875, 2,000 bushels Of Corn and oals 
for the farmers. I have ground 16 bushels of 
clean corn In 58 minutes by the watch, and 
have ground from 60 to 130 bushels of corn 
and oais in ten hours. I had all the mill 
could possibly do until spring work com¬ 
menced.” 
afield fltyop. 
THICK OR THIN SEEDING OF GRAIN. 
Of late years the practice of sowing or 
drilling wheat and other grains more spar¬ 
ingly has much increased. The change is 
partly due, wc hope, to better cultivation, 
better prepontion of the soil, and especially 
to the use c*£ the drill, which secures a per¬ 
fect covering of the 6eed at uniform depth. 
In sowing on the furrow, especially on now 
land among stumps and stones, not more 
than half the grain would grow, and often 
less than that. If the drill distributes evenly 
the quantity of grain really needed for a 
good seeding is very small—much less than 
any farmer thinks of sowing. Borne curious 
calculations on this subject show that a 
bushel of wheat contains about 600,000 grains, 
enough to give, if distributed evenly and all 
grew, a plant to every three square inches 
of space. One peck per acre would leave 
the plants only six inches apart, which is 
really closer than need be for a good crop. 
An Engli li farmer by hand-planting wheat, 
the grains nine inches apart, has secured a 
crop of sixty bushels per acre. 
It is commonly urged by farmers that 
thick seeding protects wheat from the se¬ 
verity of tLe winter by ensuring a large 
growth of tope. Bus as each individual 
plant is crowded and stunted, it is less fitted 
to endure the severity of winter. Often on 
fields which looked promising in fall we 
have seen the ground entirely bare iu spring. 
There is, of comse, a slight advantage in the 
decaying stems aud l’ootsof the plants which 
die, as manure, but it is the dearest fertilizer 
that any farmer can use. if wheat is to be 
used as a fertilizer let the portion not abso¬ 
lutely needed for seed be malted, so that it 
will not grow, and distribute with the rest. 
Of course no farmer would do that, but it is 
more sensible than sowing more seed than is 
needed with the idea of benefiting the ci'op. 
There is shrewd sense in the English proverb. 
The worst weed for the wheat plant is 
another wheat plant. Other weeds might 
take something not needed for wheat, but 
the surplus wheat plants rob tbe soil of what 
is most needed to be retained for tbe crop. 
We have noted some experiments in thick 
and thin sowing of spring grain. In most 
cases the results were apparently favorable 
to the thin seeding, especially where the 
ground was rich. Unfortunately the exper¬ 
iments were not accurately made, and only 
the general result can be stated. Thick seed¬ 
ing apparently did best on soil not rich enough 
to allow the grain to spread from the root. 
As a rule, the richer the land the less seed 
required or allowable. 
A further conclusion on this subject seems 
to be that thin seeding gives larger and 
heavier grain than where the plants are 
crowded closely together. By mistake last 
spring on the home farm a few bouts of bar¬ 
ley were drilled in at- the rate of little more 
than a bushel per acre. The barley for seve¬ 
ral weeks appeared quite thin, but, before 
harvest became nearly as thick as the other, 
and we fancied was a heavier head and ben-y 
than tbe remainder of the field sown at the 
rate of 2% bushels per acre. On the head¬ 
lands, where the drill overlapped, sowing 
five bushels per acre, the barley was almost 
a failure, small straw, smaller heads and 
very small grains. This view in favor of 
light seeding is confirmed by Mr. Mkchi, the 
celebrated English farmer, who says, in the 
English Agricultural Gazette, that, he has 
reduced the seeding of barley from three 
bushels to six peeks per acre, and that where 
three bushels is now sown the crop is too 
light In grain for malting, and is fit only for 
grinding. We think that on all rich land six 
pecks of barley and the same of oats are 
better than heavier seeding. For wheat one 
bushel or five pecks at most ought to be 
sufficient wherever wheat should be sown. 
As this is the season for wheat seeding we 
hope our readers having drills will try 
various quantities of seed, from one bushel 
or less to two bushels and report the result. 
-eM- 
HOW TO GROW POTATOES. 
At a recent meeting of the N. Y. Farmers’ 
Club the following letter from M R. Bel¬ 
knap of Whitewater, Wis., was read : 
“ I saw a request last spring, which came 
from your club, requesting experiments and 
a statement of results with potatoes planted 
in soil wherein ashes, salt, plaster, &c., were 
mixed. 1 herewith transmit to you the re¬ 
sult of my labor and experimenting. The 
soil in which I planted was a sandy loam 
upon which no manure bad been put for 
two years. The last crop before this was 
potatoes. The variety which I planted was 
the ‘Peer’ess.’ The rows and hills were 
three and a half feet apart each way. There 
were twenty-three hills in each row, and six 
rows, each of which was treated differently, 
as will appear hereafter. There were three 
pieces of potatoes with three eye* on each 
put in a hill, and the land was shaded by 
trees, &c., after 4 P. M. I cultivated them 
thoroughly twice and hoed them once. 
Planted April 34, and dug Bept. 4. At the 
time of digging the tops were still green, 
though touched with frost. In row No. 1, I 
put in each hill and worked into the soil 
thoroughly a good double handful of un- 
leacbed ashes before dropping the potatoes. 
The yield was 123 pounds. In row No. 2 a 
large tablespoonful of salt was thoroughly 
mixed with the soil before dropping. The 
yield was 89 pounds. In row No. 8 a single 
handful ot ashes, and also a tablespoonful ot 
salt, were thoroughly mixed with the soil 
before dropping. The yield was 92 pounds. 
In row No. i a single handful of plaster was 
put in each hill. The yield was 92 pounds. 
In row No. 5 a tablespoonful of sulphur and 
a single handful of plaster were mixed and 
worked into the soil before dropping. The 
yield was 94 pounds. In row No. 8 a single 
handful of ashes and the same of plaster 
were mixed with the soil before dropping, 
and the yield was 94 pounds. The most 
handsome and smooth jjotatoes were found 
in rows where sulphur was put. The best in 
size were found in lows No. 1 and No. 6. 
The Coloi-ado beetle we have very little 
trouble with, using as a preventive to its 
ravages a heaping teaspoonful of Paris green 
of good quality in twelve quarts of water. 
Une thorough sprinkling ot the vines with 
this preparation after sundown will be suffi¬ 
cient for the entire season, unless it should 
rain within twenty-four hour?, in which case 
a repetition will be necessary. For this sec¬ 
tion for quality for summer and winter use 
Thorburu’s Late Rose Potato is the potato 
par excellence, and yields about three times 
the amount that the Early Rose does. A 
friend of mine has a peculiar faculty of raising 
large yields of Peachblows on oak openings 
with clay soil. He raises 600 bushels per 
acre. The soil is manured with green ma¬ 
nure, and plowed in the fall ; in spring 
plowed lightly, and thorougldy dragged and 
planted as early as the soil can be worked. 
For evenness of size they beat all I ever saw, 
except where ‘ sorting ’ was resorted to.” 
-«-*♦-- 
■ Profitable Wheat. —The Canada Farmer 
says that last fall Mr. OLIVER of Elm Bank, 
Toronto Township, bought enough Clawsofi 
wheat to seed two and one quarter acres. 
It yielded 110 bushels and sold at $2.75 per 
bushel for seed, being at the rate of $140.55 
per acre. 
nJ. 
